Liquified Natural Gas (Lng) Downstream marketing and business growth in Nigeria: An empirical evidence small and meduim scale enterprises

Abstract

The study focused on the effect of Liquefied Natural Gas downstream sector marketing on business growth in Nigeria, an empirical evidence from SMEs. Specifically the study also set out to achieve the following sub objective as follows; analyze the effect of low cost strategy on the cost advantage of the selected LNG plants in the study area and ascertain the effect of market focus strategy on the sales volume of the selected LNG plants in the study area. Various research questions were raised and research hypotheses formulated. Porters Five Forces Model was adopted as the theoretical underpin for the study. The study adopted a causal survey research design. Here the opinion of the respondents was elicited through a well-structured Likert-scale type of questionnaire. This was carried out through questionnaire administration to the 400 target respondents; especially the owners, managers and employees of the selected LNG plants in the study area. Simple regression model was used to test the hypotheses which was in conformity to the study objectives with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22. It was found that low-cost strategy is vital towards attainment of cost advantage in the oil and gas downstream sector. The study revealed that low-cost as a competitive strategy has significant effect on the cost advantage of the selected LNG plants in Abia and Imo States, Nigeria. We also found out that from the objective two, being market focused improves the firm’s sales volume. Hence, market focus strategy has significant effect on the sales volume of the selected LNG plants in Abia and Imo State. The study recommends that the selected LNG plants in Abia and Imo States should adopt cost control and cost reduction techniques; especially by the use of outsourcing, subcontracting, and buyer-seller relationship businesses and there is also the need to adopt market focus strategies by focusing on specific group of customers in a particular market segment.